Chapter VIII: To the Teacher

Set the pupils to watching for evidences of mother-love among
the lower creatures, where we do not think of finding it; stir
them to look for unreported acts, and the hidden, less easily
observed ways. Such a suggestion might be the turning of a new
page for them in the book of nature.

FOR THE PUPIL

PAGE 65

_Cud_: the ball of grass or hay that the cow keeps bringing up
from her first stomach to be chewed and swallowed, going then
into the second stomach, where it is digested.

_stanchions_: the iron or wooden fastening about the cow’s neck
in the stall.

_mother-principle_: the instinct or unconscious impulse of all
living things to reproduce their kind.

PAGE 66

_spores_: the name of the seed dust of the ferns.

_the hunter family_: these are the spiders that build no nets
or webs for snaring their prey, but hunt their prey over the
ground.

PAGE 69

_Toadfish_: See the chapter in the “Fall of the Year” called “In
the Toadfish’s Shoe.”

PAGE 70

_Surinam toads_: pronounced sōō-rī-näm´.

_Mother-passion ... in the life of reptiles_: many readers,
seeing this statement in the “Atlantic Monthly,” where the
essay first appeared, have written me of how when they were
_boys_ they saw snakes swallow their young--or at least killed
the old snakes with young in them! Isn’t that mother-love among
the reptiles? But every time the story has been about garter
snakes or moccasins or some other ovoviviparous snake; that is,
a snake that does not lay eggs, but keeps them within her body
till they hatch, then _gives birth_ to the young. I have never
seen a snake swallow its young; though big snakes do _eat_
little ones whenever they can get them.